Whether or not there is any "real" d-LSD available on the underground market is a debate that recurs cyclically. Most informed people in the field dismiss the occasional flare-up of claims that those who have only had street acid after the 1970s have never had "pure acid". This claim is often accompanied by related claims that modern street acid is badly made, contaminated, degraded, or something other than LSD altogether. There are further speculations about whether even minute impurities could affect the receptor binding of LSD and therefore change the experience, or how LSD degrades over time, possibly converting active LSD into lumi-LSD, iso-LSD, or other less-well-known degradation products that might alter the effects of the material.

It is our job to take such debates seriously and to try to add data to them wherever possible. Six years ago, we attempted to start an LSD Testing Project, but the complexity of the actual testing procedure coupled with a fear of the Drug Enforcement Administration by the labs licensed and capable of doing such testing meant that we were only able to get a single sample analyzed. Recently, an event occurred that provides some additional data in this slowly evolving debate.

An unopened, brown-glass vial of 1951 Sandoz LSD-25 (Delysid) was contributed to a gathering in celebration of Albert Hofmann's 100th birthday. The vial had been in the possession of a single person for the last 30+ years, stored casually, mostly in darkness. When opened, the powder was a very light brown-sugar to salmon color. One chemist described the fluffy, clumpy, sparkly crystalline powder as looking like "crushed needles". It was weighed and dissolved into four-ounce liquid doses containing between 100 and 110 micrograms each (± 10%).

Storage & Degradation

Although the vial was completely sealed, without cracks, one of the major questions was whether there would be significant loss of potency by degradation as a result of the 55 years that had passed since it was manufactured. After trying it, the predominant opinion among the more than 70 participants and observers was that there was no detectable loss in potency. This was the clearest result from the reported experiment: air-tight brown glass appears to be a very effective long-term storage method for LSD. After 55 years, stored at varying room temperatures, the LSD seemed to be fully potent.

Is Sandoz LSD Different?

The other major question on many people's minds seemed to be how Sandoz LSD would differ from the street acid they'd taken before. This was something a number of them considered, after the initial surprise over the fact that the material seemed not to have lost potency. We asked several participants to further describe their thoughts, by answering the query:

"Briefly describe your experience with LSD (number of times taken, how long ago first taken) and compare your experience of other sources of acid with the Sandoz material you tried. Was the Sandoz LSD different than street acid? Was it about the same? Share some of your thoughts about this."

Some people appeared hesitant to answer whether they felt that the Sandoz LSD was qualitatively different from other acid they had taken. Several participants were moderately concerned that if they said the LSD seemed similar to other street acid, the observation could potentially sadden other participants or appear ungrateful to the extremely generous provider.
There were raves about the unquestioned magic of the event, and the unique opportunity to try such an elusive and mythically sourced substance. However, the consensus among those to whom we spoke who had substantial experience with street acid was that the 55-year-old, apparently fully potent, Sandoz LSD was experientially indistinguishable from other acid they'd tried.
Unfortunately, this subjective finding is unlikely to satisfy people who believe that street acid is impure and low quality. There could be two reasons why the effects of the Sandoz LSD were nearly identical to that of street LSD: good quality street acid could be as pure as Sandoz LSD, or the Sandoz LSD could have been impure or degraded. However, participants described feeling, both during and after the experience, that the quality was high and the potency undamaged; they considered the argument "street acid isn't really like pure LSD" to be settled.

Following are short comments from four people who tried the 1951 Sandoz LSD.

I first tried acid about 12 years ago and have taken it a total of around 40 times. I've had blotter, microdots, and liquid LSD. The quality has varied from time to time and batch to batch, with some notable paper seeming to be clearly different than others and some seeming better. I heard about the debate regarding whether street acid was "real d-LSD" before I had ever tried it, but the resources I looked at in the early 1990s seemed to indicate that the material sold on blotter was, in fact, LSD.

I was excited about trying the material from Sandoz. I had no idea what to expect. I took an amount (in liquid) that was measured to be 150-170 µg of LSD, that is, if the crystalline material in the vial was 100% d-LSD. I have never had precisely measured LSD, but I had tried some of the brown microdots that were going around that looked like the ones Erowid wrote about in their LSD Analysis article in 2003, which said they were around 21 µg each. Four to six of those matched up with my previous experiences of a single hit of "strong" blotter.

As I started coming up on the Sandoz material, it felt like some of the better acid I'd tried. The peak several hours felt nearly identical to what I'd expect from taking eight or so of those brown dots or 1.5-2 hits of decent late 1990s blotter. It was good, but it was just like other acid. - Z

I've had the pleasure of taking LSD more than 35 times over the past 15 years. I'm usually pretty careful about the quality of the material, as careful as I can be given that the process is to buy strips of blotter from a friend and go on their word that the quality is good.

Probably two thirds of my acid trips have been with blotter and the other third split between microdots or liquid. Overall, I've been very happy with the quality. I've never gotten inactive acid, and the weakest stuff I've ever had was described that way before I bought it, so I knew what I was getting. I've had material that seemed ultra-clean (whatever that means) and I've had trips where it seemed like I was getting more body tension and anxiety than usual, though nothing particularly bad. But despite the moderate variety in my experiences, and the vague sense that one batch seems a little different than the next, it's certainly possible that it's all just normal variation in effects from pure LSD.

But I've also heard the stories that pure LSD, like Sandoz LSD or "orange sunshine" from the '60s, was somehow so much better than what's available today. So when I got the chance to try the 1951 Sandoz LSD, I was really interested to see what it would be like. I wondered if it would be weak, degraded. Or would it be way stronger than what we all expected, since it was the real deal?
I took approximately 100 µg and found it to be exactly what I'd expect from a solid single hit of good quality blotter. In terms of body load, the effects felt comparable to almost all batches of acid I've taken before. I wouldn't be able to tell the difference. It was a great experience, and for me helped answer the question of whether the acid I've had before was good material, and the answer is yes. - R

I first took LSD in 1984 while in high school. Since then, I have dropped acid perhaps sixty times, mainly in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Dealers back then usually claimed the "per hit" dose was 100 µg. Later in life I learned that this probably wasn't the case. However, most of the hits that I got were of similar potency, at least. Only once did I get some shit that was about half as strong as the hits I was used to.

I have taken "micro doses" a few times-perhaps 10-15 µg. Some friends swear by this use as a daily stimulant, increasing the dose slightly each day. I never warmed to this approach. It always created a feeling of not being comfortable in my own skin-tight and anxious, with trouble falling asleep afterwards. Side effects produced by LSD seem more pronounced when I take lower doses, since the main thing that I am getting from it is basically the side effects.

When I reach my "full dose" level-approximately 150 µg or above-my experiences are always within the scope of effects described in the LSD literature: from heavenly bliss voyages, to giggle fits, to psychological introspection, to hellish nightmares. I attribute the variance in effects to set and setting. I have never understood when people bitched about "bad acid", or how certain acid produced more physical side effects than other "cleaner" acid. This has not been the case for me: the range of effects and side effects has been consistent, regardless of the source, and dependent on the dose that I took.

While acid was my drug of choice in my late teens and early twenties, I haven't taken it frequently since then. But of course I jumped at an opportunity to try Sandoz material. Since I saw the powder being weighed, and was privy to the dosing calculations and titration, I feel comfortable that I got reasonably close to 100 µg. I chose to take this lighter dose due to the party environment that I was in, and also so that I could obtain some better sense as to what a "known dose" of 100 µg feels like. I spent an enjoyable evening with friends and acquaintances, sharing a lot of laughter. Visuals were in full effect, but there was nothing transpersonal at this level. At one point, I was absolutely certain of a question that a friend was about to ask me, and then he asked it-a strange bit of telepathy, since the inquiry wasn't related directly to anything we were talking about. So there was some of that "magic" present that makes one want to believe that anything is possible.

Ultimately, consuming Sandoz material solidified my opinion that every time in the past when I took "street acid" the stuff that I was getting truly was LSD. The Sandoz LSD was great-it just wasn't any better. So don't let hippies who wax rhapsodic about the good old days and claim that "LSD is no longer LSD" fool you. "Bad acid" more likely indicates a "bad mindset", a "bad environment", or an incorrect dose, than any effect from some miniscule amount of impurity that might be present. - Fork

I've taken LSD probably around 30-40 times. Most of my experiences have been with blotter, but I've done liquid and microdots as well.

My experiences with LSD over the years have been varied. It can be tricky to differentiate which characteristics of an experience can be attributed to a drug versus set and setting.

With that disclaimer in mind, I must say that I could not tell the difference between the Sandoz LSD and any other form of LSD I've tried. I was certainly paying attention to this issue, as I've heard the claims that acid today isn't as good as it used to be, in the '50s and '60s, but I would have to say, based on my experiences, that acid is acid. - F